1. Field
This disclosure is generally related to psychological analysis. More specifically, this disclosure is related to a method and system for predicting personality by combining predictions from predictors generated from multiple data sources.
2. Related Art
The ability to reliably predict a person's personality affects many commercial and personal activities. For example, if social gaming service providers know a player's personality well, they can provide better targeted advertisements for virtual goods. If an online dating service provider knows a candidate's personality well, they can match the candidate with a higher chance of success. In a high-stakes work environment, if an employer finds a significant mismatch between an employee's personality profile and the nature of the job, the employer can take measures to mitigate or avoid risks.
In one approach, to profile a personality, an analyst can request a person fill out a detailed survey. The analyst can determine the person's personality profile using the answers. For example, the International Personality Item Pool (http://ipip.ori.org/ipip/) provides a collection of such survey items. The analyst can then predict the person's personality according to the Five Factor Model's personality traits. These traits are extraversion (outgoing, gregarious, energetic vs. reserved, shy, quiet), agreeableness (friendly, caring, cooperative vs. suspicious, antagonistic, competitive), conscientiousness (organized, self-disciplined, dutiful vs. careless, spontaneous, easy-going), neuroticism (calm, secure, confident vs. nervous, sensitive, vulnerable), and openness (abstract thinkers, imaginative, intellectually curious vs. down-to-earth, conventional, traditional). The person's personality is measured with a real number along each of the personality traits.
In another approach, a script can guide a person to select attributes from a group consisting of saturated, whitened, grayed, and blackened. This approach then analyzes the elements to identify personality characteristics. Like the survey method, this approach also requires explicitly requesting information from the subject.
In yet another approach, an analyst collects user information, and creates behavioral profiles for users based on the collected information. This approach suggests utilizing pre-existing customer data, interviews, or questionnaires, to create customer behavioral profiles. Unfortunately, this approach also explicitly requests information from users to build personality profiles, which is burdensome and in many cases is not practical.